August 12, 2025
VASIṢṬHA continued:
O Rāma, in this connection there is an ancient legend which I shall narrate to you.
In the continent known as Jambūdvīpa there is a great mountain known as Mahendra. In the forests on the slopes of that mountain many holy men and sages lived. They had in fact brought down onto that mountain the river Vyoma Gaṅgā (or Akāśa Gaṅgā) for their bath, drinking, etc. On the bank of this river, there lived a holy man named Dīrghatapā who was as his name implies the very embodiment of ceaseless austerity.
This ascetic had two sons named Puṇya and Pāvana. Of these Puṇya had reached full enlightenment, but Pāvana, though he had overcome ignorance, had not yet reached full enlightenment and hence he had semi-wisdom.
With the inexorable passage of invisible and intangible time, the sage Dīrghatapā who had freed himself from every form of attachment and craving had grown in age and even as a bird flies away from its cage, abandoned the body and reached the state of utter purity. Using the yogic method she had learnt from him, his wife, too, followed him.
At this sudden departure of the parents, Pāvana was sunk in grief and he wailed aloud inconsolably. Puṇya, on the other hand, performed the funeral ceremonies but remained unmoved by the bereavement. He approached his grieving brother, Pāvana.
PUṆYA said:
Brother, why do you bring this dreadful sorrow upon yourself? The blindness of ignorance alone is the cause of this torrential downpour of tears from your eyes. Our father has departed from here along with our mother to that state of liberation or the highest state which is natural to all beings and is the very being of those who have overcome the self. Why do you grieve when they have returned to their own nature? You have ignorantly bound yourself to the notions of ”father” and ”mother”; and yet you grieve for those who are liberated from such ignorance! He was not your father, nor was she your mother, nor were you their son. You have had countless fathers and mothers. They have had countless children. Countless have been your incarnations! And, if you wish to grieve over the death of parents, why do you not grieve for all those countless beings unceasingly?
Noble one, what you see as the world is only an illusory appearance. In truth there are neither friends nor relations. Hence, there is neither death nor separation. All these wonderful signs of prosperity that you see around you are tricks that last some for three days and others for five days! With your keen intelligence enquire into the truth: abandon notions of ”I”, ”you”, etc., and of ”He is dead”, ”He is gone”. All these are your own notions, not truth.